


Aitai

by ProwlingThunder



Series: Blood and Scales [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Born into Occupation, Canonical Character Death, Distant Family Members, Dragons, Emotional Dependancy, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Grooming, Large Shimada Family, M/M, Minor Character Death, Multi, Occupational Lifestyle, Pining, Shimada Bodyguards, Shimada Clan Politics, Shimada Cousins, Shinobi, Torture, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-05
Updated: 2017-01-05
Packaged: 2018-09-14 22:18:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9205607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProwlingThunder/pseuds/ProwlingThunder
Summary: Haruko Shimada lives and breathes for only one person.





	

**Author's Note:**

> According to reliable sources, Aitai is Japanese for "I would like to see you."
> 
> I'm sure this needs more tags, but I'm not sure what they are at the moment. Hm. If you have suggestions, please drop them in the comments section! If I agree they fit, I'll add them in.

She grew up on the family grounds, aware that one day the young prince would be her charge for all that she wasn’t much older. It was a strange thing for her-- partly because she remembered being a little girl, watching a little baby, and wondering why he was so  _ small-- _ and she never quite grew out of it, the aw she felt whenever Genji did anything.

The thing was, Genji was loved by everybody, not just her. She knew that. She wasn’t-- jealous, exactly, when they were young. It would have been nice for the adults to notice her shadowing his footsteps, but  _ Genji  _ noticed her, and that was enough. At least she wasn’t as bad off as Yuuma, who followed the elder brother around-- quiet and sullen, restrained.

Yuuma didn’t get to run through the courtyard. Or flit through the trees. He didn’t get to climb the castle walls after his charge. Haruko did, because Genji did all those things, and the adults praised him for his achievements. 

(Haruko had the interesting job of teaching him half of it. They didn’t praise her. Genji did. It was  _ enough. _ )

(Until it wasn’t.)

Because eventually Genji left the family grounds, old enough to be let loose in Hanamura with his shadow. The townsfolk loved him, of course; he charmed three grandmothers out of hand-knit scarves in the first week alone. He kept two of them but he gave one to her, bright and ferociously pink, even though she really couldn’t wear it. The thought mattered. Genji was always thinking of everyone.

~~She loved him for it.~~

-

Of course. Growing up meant  _ growing up. _ Haruko had dealt with her own issues-- red stained half her uniforms, half her outwear, the dresses Genji insisted he buy her because obviously she couldn’t wear her gi all the time, could she? She stuck out that way. She found herself easily flustered, too, her body and hormones shifting, and it was lousy but at least it was her.

Then it hit Genji, and her world fucking ended at the drop of a smile. A pretty school-girl, he was smitten and Haruko--

Behaved, because it was for Genji; Genji liked the girl, and Haruko had never been able to deny him anything, not even as children when he wanted to practice with  _ her _ hira instead of finding his own set, lost somewhere in the yard and possibly several of the Lord’s favorite trees. She  _ did _ offer the girl acupuncture. Once. Genji’s disappointed, warning frown had led her not to offer twice, even though the girl had been absolutely delighted with the idea. 

And it wasn’t just the girls. And it wasn’t just Genji spending time with them. She knew he couldn’t possibly spend all his time with her, even though she spent all hers with him. But it hurt, stinging, when he’d sneak off into empty rooms with someone or rent a hotel,  _ buy a hotel _ , and leave her posted at the door to make sure they went undisturbed.

In Hanamura. In Tokyo. In  _ other countries, _ when he decided to travel the world and Haruko went with him. Genji was the sort of inexhaustible passion that drove people wild, and he was restless, and Haruko was…

Well. Jealous. She was willing to admit she was jealous.

Hadn’t she grown up with him? Didn’t she love him enough? If he didn’t like her, why didn’t he just replace her?  _ Dozens _ of other family members would love to be his guardian and see the world with him.

She didn’t think he did it on purpose. He bought her nice things, practical things; gloves that hid the coiling shapes climbing up her arms, nice tops and practical clothes, things that made her feel pretty and like a girl. He  _ told _ her she looked nice, introduced her, occasionally, as his girlfriend-- which was only practical, even if untrue, and usually those days he went back to his hotel alone to sleep and it was a reprieve, for her, just to watch him rest-- but usually he forgot she was walking behind him.

-

It’s easier to mind Genji when he’s grown. Haruko develops thicker skin for his disapproval over time. She’s doing her  _ job, _ keeping him alive, and if he loses out on fun then at least he’s still breathing:

(One time Genji took to bed a neighboring family’s  _ personal assassin, _ and dismissed Haruko to stand outside the door, and worry and fear drove Haruko into a week’s worth of illness. Genji is not an exhibitionist, she wasn’t allowed to stay and watch  ~~ Genji would never get laid if she were allowed to stay and watch him bed other people ~~  and every  _ sound _ had felt like a knife in her chest, because there had been a very real possibility that her lord was in there being  _ murdered _ and there was nothing Haruko could do to stop it.

Haruko didn’t know if Genji had visited her, but  _ Rin _ and  _ Lord Shimada _ sure as fuck  _ did. _ )

“Genji,” she says, at some party in some country, dropping the honorific as he pleases but saying the name with the lilt that says  _ it’s important. _ There’s a local fox eyeing him from the other side of the room, and she’s pretty enough  ~~ Haruko’s jealous enough ~~  that she’s going to come over here and slide up to him and Haruko isn’t sure she’s  _ not _ an assassin. One who carries risk of actually following through with it, while Haruko is regulated to the Outside.

It doesn’t help that her lord isn’t sober enough to be making informed decisions that Haruko can trust. He’s drunker than he looks to onlookers; he’s a  _ dragon, _ a Shimada, and they can all hold their liquor better than anybody. But it takes it’s toll on them. He’s only awake  _ now _ because of the energy in the room.

“Yes?”

“Your plane leaves early tomorrow,” which isn’t a lie, even if ‘early’ is about three in the afternoon. She’ll have him awake and nursing his hangover by nine.

Genji squinted at her. Blinked. Held out his arm, encouraging her close (hiding his lethargy from his newfound friends, and it stings that she’s not really in that circle, even still) and Haruko dutifully slides up to him, an invisible support that looks like eyecandy.

The fox stops part-way across the floor. Haruko meets her gaze over Genji’s shoulder and flashes her a sharp-toothed dragon-smile, victorious and vicious.

When they get back to his hotel room, Haruko pours him into bed and fetches a glass of water so she won’t have to go anywhere while he sleeps it off. She wishes she could curl up with him, the mattress looks all sorts of comfortable  ~~ she wishes she could sleep beside him, just once ~~  but she tucks herself into one of the chairs instead.

When Genji wakes up, she is there waiting for him with the wastebasket (just in case) and the water and a bowl of oatmeal, which works a little better than rice on an upset stomach.

-

_ How do you stand it, _ Haruko asks Yuuma once in silence, while Genji and his brother chase each other across the training floor in a game of jest. Practice, what little fun the elder lord has and can still have with his brother.

_ Stand what? _ Not in so many words. But silent conversations are a thing the shadows of the Shimada lords have learned, that they’ll pass on to their successors, not quite the same language the rest of the family uses, a dialect just amongst them. It’s a secret, oft unobserved. Yuuma’s words are a curl of his knuckles, a twist of his wrist.

If Lord Shimada were here..

He’s not. Well. No. He  _ is. _ His shadow sits next to her. Haruko misses Rin. She doesn’t know where he went.

Haruko watches Lord Shimada step forward, into Genji’s range, and dance out again, quick as a viper. It’s a dance between brothers. Genji does a lot of dancing, they’re all different and they’re never with her. It’s thrilling to watch at least some of it. 

_ You love him. _ Observation. A long look, tip of her head. Yuuma’s not as obvious about it as Rin had been. Haruko thinks it’s a curse they all fall for their kings.

Yuuma’s expression is distant.  _ I don’t know what you’re talking about, _ he says, and it’s an answer to all the questions and then a few more. Anybody watching might have mistaken it for refusal, if they understood it at all. Haruko’s not anyone, and Genji is a master of bluff and misdirection. She knows better.

He doesn’t know how to stand it. He suffers as much as she. Haruko feels better with the knowledge.

-

It happens on Children’s Day.

When Haruko was very young, before young Genji became her responsibility, before she knew Yuuma as anybody but young lord Hanzo’s perpetual shadow, Haruko’s mother strung metallic carp on a single golden string and hung it next to the door of their quarters. One for her father, one for her mother, three for Haruko and her two brothers. Haruko is pretty sure her family continues to do it, although she’s not seen her old rooms since her assignment began.

Technically Haruko has a room next to Genji’s, with a polite-fiction door to come and go hidden, but she’s never used it and she only has a cursory understanding of what the room next door looks like. If she wanted, she could string her own carp.

Genji doesn’t participate in the little ritual. Haruko doesn’t impose throughout the years. It’s not her place, and anyway, the Shimada lords have their own rites.

They go to dinner that night and, well, she and Yuuma don’t eat. They’re basically ghosts. It’s after dinner-- and by that Haruko means Lord Shimada decides dinner is over and the plates and left-overs are carried out-- that the assembled shadows are dismissed.

The words don’t come out of Genji’s mouth.  _ Or _ Lord Shimada’s. The Shimada Elders say it, as though they have the right, as though they  _ can, _ and Haruko is all ready to stand firm and deny them everything when Lord Shimada looks past her at Yuuma and something happens, some flicker of understanding she doesn’t know.

“I must speak to my brother alone.”

Yuuma bows, vanishes back into the shadows of the room and makes his way-- Haruko can feel him, see him in her peripheral-- to the door.

She doesn’t go anywhere until Genji flashes her a smile and nods. The shadows behind the elders are already gone, flitted off to some unknown darkness. Haruko’s instinct rails against it-- it feels like she’s being dismissed to stand outside the doors again-- but it’s Genji, so she goes, too. Yuuma closes the door behind her.

_ Something’s wrong, _ she tells him. The trouble is, she’s not sure if he’s listening.

_ We should go eat before they throw out the scraps. _

Her stomach rumbles. She hasn’t eaten in hours; Genji has been too full of energy to bother sitting down long enough for a meal.

Genji said he’d be okay, so Haruko follows Yuuma to the kitchens to steal away what she can.

A runner finds them not ten, fifteen minutes later, twenty.  _ The lords have fought,  _ the man says,  _ he’s dead. _

-

In all worlds she and Yuuma race back to learn what’s going on, hearts heavy as stones, because one of them has failed in their duties and the pain is both real and visceral for them both and sympathy as well.

In all worlds they find both lords, both wounded, one dead.

-

But in one world, it’s her Genji on the ground: 

Genji, covered in blood, still bleeding, broken beyond repair. Not breathing. There’s so many wounds, so much damage, and Haruko’s brain seizes at the sight of it. So many years of trying to protect him from this very thing, so many years of thinking it would be strangers, and it was Lord Shimada all along.

“Dispose of the traitor,” someone says, not Yuuma, not Lord Shimada, someone else, someone Haruko doesn’t know herself but knows is high enough that now (now) Haruko answers to him. She doesn’t know who he’s talking about, but he’s talking to her and there’s only one body--

_ Genji. _

She doesn’t have a choice. But as long as it’s her, and not another--

“There will be no funeral.”

There are no funerals for traitors. But she doesn’t, it’s  _ Genji, _ she doesn’t understand. She knows she will be watched though, and it hurts to gather him up, there’s so much blood and so much damage, sword-bite into bone and through flesh, his eyes are closed ( _ Genji is dead) _ and, at least, the red of her gi will fade the stain from cloth. She can feel the red of his blood fade through her gloves and stain her dragons, greedy things swallowing it whole, making her ill.

She gets him out of the castle and knows they’re no longer watching her take the body to disposal. Then she hears, or feels, something, a twitch or a groan, and realizes:  _ Genji is alive. _

Alive and dying. There’s only one place, one group of people, Haruko thinks can help him. She is no healer, and no healer in Hanamura will now touch him. But there are  _ people who can help him, _ and she hugs him close, heart-sick and heart-sore and dying on the inside as she races through streets and over rooftops to a gold effigy and a base of peace-keepers, heroes who brought the world to heel.

It’s her only chance. His only chance. There’s  _ so much blood. _

-

In one world he’s alive. Sitting there, kneeling next to his brother (Lord Shimada is  _ dead, _ broken and bleeding, and Genji’s dragon-heart is across the room, as drenched in blood as he) and it’s she, not Yuuma, who crosses that gap first, a hairsbreadth quicker.

Genji’s wounded, but alive. He looks at her when she kneels next to him, touches his shoulder. (Yuuma has a shell-shocked and heartbroken expression, not as well hidden as he likes, not hidden enough, Haruko can see the way he’s dying inside but all she can think is  _ Genji’s alive.) _

“I killed him,” a whisper, broken, wounded, raw from pain and barely-awake, but her lord’s words rock Yuuma like a whip where he’s trying, desperate, to stop the blood. Hanzo doesn’t move, doesn’t breathe, but he’s still bleeding, and the healers haven’t made it here to shove Yuuma away.

She doesn’t know how much of the blood is Genji’s but it’s too much already. She pulls him away from the body-- he resists, but only weakly, in shock which can kill as readily as any wound. He’s still mouthing the words. He doesn’t seem to recognize her at all.

“Come, my lord.”

So much blood.

They pass the healers on the way out the door, and Haruko can see in her peripheral them bodily shove Yuuma aside from where he’s  _ trying,  _ his own clothes pressed hard in a vain attempt to stop the bleeding, unwilling to admit the truth before his eyes.

She hears, later: Lord Shimada is pronounced dead. Genji, her Genji, will be the new Lord Shimada. The funeral will be held in three days.

Later still: a rival family has stolen Lord Hanzo’s body. 

Genji doesn’t react to the news. Haruko chases the messenger out of the recovery room. Every time the door opens, Genji looks up as if expecting Hanzo to walk through it, and it’s never him. It will never  _ be _ him.

The Elders claim they were attacked. That’s the rumor going around.

Haruko isn’t sure the pieces fit.

-

In the one world, Haruko makes it almost to the medical wing before they figure out she’s in the building. The base is huge and sprawling but Haruko knows where the heart of any fortress is, she knows where the healers will be. She’s good, she’s quick, and the only reason they know they’ve been invaded is the trail of distant blood-spots she leaves behind.

Genji bleeds less now. There’s nothing Haruko can do on her own.

Nothing she can do. Except stare down the guns pointed at her, at them, passed them into the eyes of men and women who carry the weapons-- as if they could protect them from her, from the dragons, and Haruko can feel them writhe beneath her skin, crazed by the taste of Genji’s blood, ready to fight and kill and die for their lord.

It takes all Haruko has not to let them. She is not here to fight.

“Please,” and it hurts, that word, asking anything of anybody, begging them for anything. She’s a Shimada, a dragon, she’s  _ proud _ but not so proud she won’t kneel before them, if they take Genji, if they save him. “ _ Please. _ He-- he’s alive, you must--”

“ _ Fuck, _ he’s still breathing-- someone get Angela,  _ now, _ ” and Haruko could cry. She doesn’t know the man, he’s just some hero, heroes live in the light and Haruko’s been blinded by Genji’s all this time, still is blinded, the man doesn’t matter but his words--

A woman made of spun gold comes, dressed in white. There’s a gurney, and so much  _ blood. _

When they take Genji away in a rush of people and movement, Haruko tries to go after. She’s restrained, but she tries.

She ends up in a cell (it’s laughable, that they think it could hold her, that they think they could  _ survive _ if she wanted them  _ dead, _ ) and she stays there, waiting. For Genji.

She waits a long time.

-

This is what Haruko knows of Overwatch: when she was a small girl, there was a nine-year war with the omnics. The war raged for years before a group was banded together to fight it, as opposed to individual countries attempting it on their own. That group was Overwatch.

Haruko doesn’t know much about Overwatch specifically. The world knows them as heroes; it’s on in the newspapers, radio broadcasts, televisions. The Shimada are an empire of the dark shown in the light, and they are all aware that Overwatch is large and dangerous. They are a calculated threat that Yuuma likely knows more about, due to his position.

But Haruko is also aware that Overwatch helps people. There is a great humanitarian effort world-wide. Overwatch has doctors which have saved people from the very teeth of death. Doctors which may be able to save her lord.

If anyone can save him, it will be them, so she goes.

-

Haruko is a dragon caged. She paces the expanse, all long strides and tight-wound emotions; anger, fear, a gossamer-thin string of fragile hope. The cell is nothing, a holding cell, she thinks, temporary. Bars are not meant for long-term confinement, not if one means to hold a dragon, but she is grateful for them regardless. The bars are a barrier, a physical reminder of restraint.

They do not actually keep her from the man assigned to watch her cell, yet she knows he feels better to have the metal between them.  _ She _ feels better, having it between them. The dragons writhe and snap, and she wants to sink her fingers into someone, let someone else’s blood wash away that of Genji’s.

The rage keeps her alive, awake, stable.

If she lets it go, she will be broken.

Her uniform is cloth-red and blood-red and dried-red, slick and sticky, clinging to her. She can feel it drying on her skin, burning like acid. She wants to claw it off, because she cannot find her enemies and bathe in their blood. She thinks-- isn’t sure, but  _ thinks _ her enemies are the Shimada, the people who think Genji could  _ ever _ be a traitor.

Her uniform scratches at her, uncomfortable. She paces instead of stripping; she can feel his blood drying on her skin and she doesn’t want to see it--

_ There’s so much blood. _

“How’s our guest?” The words are distant and low, foreign-- English. Haruko’s English is not negligible-- she  _ is _ Genji’s guardian-- but it is better if they do not know she can understand them. Knowledge is a weapon in its own right; Overwatch believes they have disarmed her, and she welcomes to let them think so.

Let them think she is at their mercy. Let them think she is trapped, that she is harmless. Weak.

Anything to save Genji.

“Hate to say it, sir, but I’ve seen caged tigers look more passive. She hasn’t stopped moving since we shoved her in there.”

_ Caged tigers. _ It is an apt description, Haruko guesses, if wrong. They should be so lucky if she were a tiger. Then the bars would have more meaning.

“Has she said anything?”

“Not a word, sir.”

The footsteps stop. Haruko does not stop pacing. She can see them out of the corner of her eyes; her guard across the bars, one of the guards from down the hall, who is posted near the door. Two women, strong, broad-built, standing on either side of a man, tall, blond hair cut short and neat. He is tall and in charge, she figures, considering her cell guard is doing something truly baffling with his arm. The women, Haruko notes, carry shotguns.

The foreigner opens his mouth and Japanese comes out.

“No word yet,” he says, one hand on his hip and one raking through his hair. If she were less wound, it might have been shy or endearing. As he stands, though, it makes him seem nervous and afraid. Satisfaction nets beneath her breast. “Mercy’s still got your guy in surgery. No news is good news, though, means he’s still hanging in there.”

Haruko stops pacing. Turns to look at him, careful, even though it’s hard. Her lord’s life hangs by a thread, and her actions can cut it if she’s not careful.

The stranger smiles at her, or tries. It doesn’t reach his eyes, which have caught sight of the red staining her throat, her cheeks, the tips of her black hair, sheared at the shoulders. His attention trails down, soaking up the sight of blood-soaked red. He seems-- not quite surprised by what he finds, she thinks. More surprised than not. Haruko resists the urge to smile back at him, bare her teeth,  _ dare _ \--

“Damn. I thought they let you shower already. Come here, let’s fix that. We’re going to have to cuff you until we get to the showers. Some people have twitchy trigger fingers. That okay?”

It feels like an offer she can deny. She wonders if he constructed it to seem that way, to give her an out. If he is aware the only one she’ll bend her knees and obey lies in surgery at his mercy.

The cuffs in his fingers are shiny, silver, broad and thin but strong. These are the people who fought the omnics; these are likely designed to prevent anyone from slipping out of them, breaking loose.

It almost doesn’t feel like it’s her moving forward, laying her wrists together and slipping her arms through. She keeps herself as still as possible when he takes her hands, slides one cuff on, then the other, around the bodies of dragons, like the taming of beasts.

She could get loose, she thinks. They are made to withstand so much, but Shimada dragons chew through anything. Like the bars, the cuffs are not so much a hindrance as a reminder.

The man lets her out of the cell-- the shotguns the women carry are nose-up, warning, a reminder, too-- and leads her down the hall. He walks closer than he should, considering the danger breeding beneath her skin. She could reach out, cuffs or no cuffs-- sink her claws into his chest, break him open, rip him apart before anyone could stop her. Use his body as a shield from the shotgunners, the foreign women--

Genji’s blood soaks into her lungs, chokes her.

She behaves. She wants to wash away her shame.

She did not come here to fight.

-

The Shimada have a ritual:

When Haruko is fourteen, balancing on the precipice between girlhood and womanhood, she is separated from her charge for the longest time she has ever been. She is stripped and bathed in oils, and locked in a hidden part of the castle. There is a pond, crystal-clear and deep enough to submerge in, greenery and dragon effigies and embellishments adorn all four walls and the rafters of the ceiling, caging her in. She is given no food.

For days, she meditates beneath the statues and asks the dragons to accept her. She bathes in the pool nightly, which never grows filthy and is always bitingly cold, and waits to see if a dragon will appear on her skin. Her options are success or death; it is a test she is not permitted to fail.

She grows hungry, silence and emptiness broken by sparrows, a breeze she can hear but not taste, not touch. It is a test of patience, of worth. Night and day spin and twine together endlessly, seamless enough she loses them. There is always light in here. It is part of the magic.

Haruko waits, and prays.

One night (day?) her prayers are answered.

She dips her fingers beneath the pool, cupping water to sip, to wash away grime, and blue blooms like trailing vines. Dragons, looping around the skin on her fingers, twining and knotting together in a ball of shock-blue over the back of her hand, laying on the neck of one whose head and maw cut over the soft between thumb and forefinger, whose forward claws curl around her thumb to her wrist, talons over her pulse. The body coils around her forearm, thin and tight, tail ending just above the point of her elbow.

The other arm is identical down to the detail.

Haruko slips a blooming flower beneath the door and waits to be released. When she is, there is a tattooist at the ready. He follows the outline of the dragons, finds the spot on the inside of the elbow devoid of design, and inks the Shimada crest into the soft skin.

(Haruko is not immediately returned to her charge, exactly. There are months of grueling training which follow, but she spends her days with Genji, under the watchful eye of a trainer tasked with making sure her mastery of this art is completed in a timely manner.

But Haruko is a Shimada dragon, now, with a lord to protect and to love, and she can feel the way they bristle at the idea of someone harming him, the way she bristles, the way her mind bends first around cataloguing threats, restless, but sooths under Genji’s touch.)

(They know, in a way that Haruko does not know, does not yet understand, that Genji is her master and will always be. That she can and will never have another.)

-

Genji went through the Ritual a few years after. Haruko was forbidden from entering, because it wasn’t just about Genji’s patience, then. If she screwed up his ritual, he may never get another chance at it; a dragon may never take him.

She ended up leaning against the opposite wall, resting, dancing on the line between alert and sleep. The shadows of lords caught snatches of stolen sleep in the space between raindrops, between heartbeats, always running on  _ just enough _ and  _ not enough, _ but the walking meditations and varying practices that keep them functioning and useful for their lords are no true replacement for real sleep.

(When Genji exits, a few short hours later, Haruko feels more rested than she has since she was a small girl.)

(She has never before been, and will never be, more proud than she was at that moment. A green dragon snakes around Genji’s leg time and time again, the tail looping his ankles and head on his hip, forked horns resting on the shelf of bone. The tattooist puts the Shimada crest below outstretched claws, in familial gold, but the dragon is as green as fresh spring leaves. 

It’s as green as Lord Genji’s hair.)

-

Overwatch has nothing but showers; community bathing, not a tub in sight, and Haruko is both bewildered and relieved. She lets the Overwatch soldier remove the cuffs, standing before the noses of both shotguns, and dutifully waits until he steps out of her range to move again.

She finds a shower, twists it on before undressing. She has to wash, and her uniform needs it as well. The water’s still cold when she works off the material, gloves first.

It felt weird, to bathe without Genji. Weirder still, because she knew she was being observed; she was a stranger, untrusted, it would be weirder if she weren’t.

She washes the blood off first before going further, scraping away Genji’s essence and soothing the spirits on her flesh. Some of the color doesn’t leach away. She does her best to ignore it-- now’s not the time, they’re letting her shower now, she might not get another chance. (She keeps looking around for Genji.)

The soldier clears his throat, excuses himself. Haruko barely notices in her desire to wash away her lord’s blood, wash it out of her clothes.

It doesn’t matter what they see. She’s not shy about her body; she’s muscled and lithe, short-haired and not pale enough to be pretty, but she doesn’t need to be. Her responsibility isn’t to be pretty. Her responsibility is to protect Genji. (Look how well she did that.)

When she goes to put her clothes back on, one of the shotgunners stops her, carrying dry camo. There are no gloves. She dresses in them anyway, tries not to look at her forearms, her fingers. Without her gloves on, Haruko feels exposed, more vulnerable than she would if she were simply naked.

(They’re supposed to be covered in blue. The red makes her want to vomit, a pigment that shouldn’t be; the dragons are purple, poisoned with her lord’s blood.) 

She goes back to her cell and hangs the cloth on the bars to dry.

-

She goes back to waiting. The restlessness is gone, the urge for violence. Somehow, this distressed her guard further.

Eventually another soldier comes by. He talks to the guard for a moment, low, some language Haruko knows but barely. He and her guard change places; watch rotation. She has never been assigned watch, at the castle, because she has other duties, but she knows how it works. Eight hours.

A part of her wants to sleep, but closing her eyes would be disrespectful, when her lord fights for his life. She settles in for a longer wait, but every sound down the halls prick at her attention, fresh hope surging from dormancy at every passerby.  _ No news is good news, _ the soldier said. (Haruko thinks he was lying. Trying to spare her feelings. She has no idea what she will do if he dies, but she will not stay here.)

(She doesn’t know what she will do if he lives.)

-

“Sorry,” the soldier says, three, four guard changes later. He’s tall and handsome in a foreign way, the essence of something greater; the blinding gold light of heroes. She feels like they change guards much quicker than the castle. It doesn’t help her keep time, but it doesn’t let her sleep. (Sleeping while Genji dies would be  _ disrespectful, _ and he might pull through and wake while she rests. Either way, it’s not a risk she can take.) “You’re not a prisoner, you know. We can get you better accommodations if you like.”

“Does he live?”

“No news yet.”

Haruko wishes she could like the man. Genji would have liked him. She would have been posted outside the door. It would be a relief; she has never been as far away from Genji as she is now. (She can’t like him.)

-

“He’s dead,” someone, one of the many myriad of soldiers who come through the halls, tells her. There’s another soldier next to him, holding her gear close, as if he thinks keeping it in his arms will protect him if she wants it back. “Just heard the news, thought we’d come down and tell you, make sure you could find the exit.”

It was a long shot in the first place. The loss hurts more this time; heroes lost their luster.

Haruko lets them escort her elsewhere, to a different door than the one she snuck into, and straps her gear into place with numb fingers. She sees herself home in early-morning light. As much as the Shimada castle can be home, without her lord inside it’s walls.

(Twenty minutes later the blond soldier comes to her cell, a spring in his step, a real smile on his lips. “Good news! Your guy’s out of surgery; Mercy pulled off a miracle--” He stops. The cell is empty, camo clothes folded up neatly on the bed she never used. He puts the base on watch for her, summons the guards that were supposed to be watching this hall, demands an answer.

“She left, sir,” they tell him. “Took her gear and walked right out the front door.” Something doesn’t sit right with that answer. He reviews security footage, or tries, but the containment wing was down for maintenance and the footage for the rest is scrambled, a virus in surveillance.

He is reluctant to go back and tell Angela of what has transpired, but he goes anyway. She may want to tell her patient, when he wakes.)

(He makes a point to get some stills of the woman from security footage that actually exists, puts them into the man’s file. Not that  _ all the footage _ of her breaking into the base isn’t secured, having been carefully reviewed so they can avoid a repeat situation forever.)

\--

The first person Haruko kills is an object lesson, for herself and not for Genji. She is young yet, when it happens, and while a few protest that she is not yet old enough for it, those voices are silenced by those who say she must learn it, young or not.

She does not know who he is; he is badly beaten when she is led into the room by Master Hiroto, and that is not the lesson for today. Her lessons in questioning will come later, when she is older, but they will be short by virtue of her position.

Today, the captive’s face is purpled, but not badly swollen. She is too young then to register the surprise on his face, but she will remember it when she is older, when she dreams while she rests. But as a child she cannot see it, nor the fear; she is afraid herself, but not so much that she does not accept the knife Master Hiroto hands her, does not follow through with the instructions.

The captive--  _ her captive, _ Master Hiroto tells her, but the possession never quite meshes-- does not move much when she kills him. Ligaments have been cut to prevent him from fighting back. His throat is too raw to scream. Master Hiroto steps her through killing him.  _ Drive the blade here, _ he says, but young as she is Haruko does not have enough force to drive it deep enough to kill.  _ Cut across here, _ and she does, slicing arteries. His blood is warm and thick and sticky.  _ And across the throat, _ at last, parting flesh.

It is not an easy death. Haruko doesn’t know what that is to give it to him. The lesson is simple: this is what it feels like to bath in another’s blood.

(Her first kill in defense of Genji is much, much later, when an ambitious French fox dares to break into Genji’s hotel room while they are abroad. Genji is quick, but Haruko is much,  _ much _ quicker.)

(Later she remembers her first kill again, after Genji’s death: she remembers a swirl of yellow scales on his ribs, where she drove the dagger into his flesh, and in a small treasonous part of her mind she wonders,  _ did I kill one of us?) _

\--

The Elders announce that Lord Shimada is going on retreat to one of the mountain estates.

Others in the halls note the strangeness of it in quiet whispers between moments when no one else can hear them. Haruko hears them only by virtue of being soundless herself; she says nothing, she draws no attention onto herself, she is invisible and untouchable.

She knows her every move is watched inside the castle. They know, as she knows, that her master is dead, and she is a dragon with no hand upon the leash. She is a rabid wolf playing at being a dog, and if she were to ever lash out, then the justice would come down upon her swiftly.

Haruko knows what others do not, when she sees a familiar face wandering the hallways alone: Lord Shimada is not on sabbatical. Yuuma wears the formal garb of his station still, but he walks the halls in no one’s shadow.

_ Where is he, _ she wants to ask, and doesn’t. When Yuuma catches her watching him, she drops her eyes and bows her head, difference in every bone and muscle.

She doesn’t flee. She is not  _ afraid of Yuuma. _ It is a tactical retreat of a beast who recognizes a greater predator.

(She  _ is _ fleeing. Yuuma’s master killed her own, and she should, needs to, avenge him. Yuuma’s blood should stain her claws. But they were friends, once, brother and sister in arms. She does not know if she could take him, if she would die trying or not. She does know she is still wounded to the heart, and too well-watched to catch him.)

(She knows if she goes after the real person responsible, she  _ will _ die, and she is not prepared to give her life to Yuuma.)

\--

(A few years later, Overwatch disbands. Haruko hears about it from one of the other servants, who heard it from Yuuma, who she no longer sees. A part of her is perversely glad for it; they could not save Genji. They are no heroes.)

\--

The scrutiny becomes less as the years pass.

It is not because Haruko becomes less dangerous, though if they think so, they are fools. A sword is no less dangerous because it is sheathed, and a dragon is no less a dragon because its teeth are broken.

It is because the family… changes.

The change begins small. It begins with a single person.

Haruko does not remember his name; she is never formally introduced. She’s not sure he has one. But he smiles bright, offers his hand for a shake (uh, no) and proudly says he’s been hired for gate security.  _ Hired. _

He  _ isn’t family, _ and that’s all that matters.

They trickle in one at a time after that, until suddenly there’s a break in the dam and they flood in. The halls are filled with people with Yak tattoos and foreign hairstyles and they don’t prickle along the dragon-sense, they’re not  _ family. _

They are not the only ones who retreat from the practice hall when she goes to vent her frustrations out. The head of security notes her savagery and confines her to her quarters  _ (Genji’s quarters) _ for the better part of a year, as if he thinks that will calm her. He might at that, since the  _ head of security _ is no longer one of their own.

(A few years after Genji’s death, the first omnic that’s brought in ends up assigned to her stretch of the castle wall. They don’t put her there, that’s just where she  _ goes. _ The omnic feels… young, prickling against the dragon-sense. Like a hatchling who may never learn to fly. Dragons writhe beneath her gloves but they don’t disapprove when she dares to edge closer. He prickles like lightning in her veins.)

(Hyouga tells her his name like he expects her to laugh. Like that’s the common response. She takes him under her wing and dares anyone to let out of a giggle in her presence. He is not a replacement--  _ Genji can never be replaced-- _ but Genji is dead and she can do nothing but this. She can do nothing but take someone young and fragile for all that they seem grown, someone who was nothing like her Genji, and protect them, teach them. She has been aimless and listless too long.)

(The Shimada know what she is. The strangers they have let inside the castle do not know, could not know. They know she has teeth but they have never felt her bite. Hyouga may not have Shimada blood for dragons to trace, but she thinks if she broke all the rules and locked him in the ritual room, he would come out with a dragon settled on his plating. The world is changing.)

(He likes her. That’s a bonus.)

\--

Haruko isn't the only thing Hyouga likes.

He likes the city. The streets, the architecture, the way everything seems to centralize around the Castle. He likes the people. Omnics are a minority, in Hanamura, and the people are not quite sure what to make of them. They can do karaoke, but they can't get drunk or participate in tea ceremonies. A lot of the bonding rituals that start friendships, business practices,  _ trust-- _ these things are beyond them.

Of course they are. It's no different from when the first foreign ships appeared in the bay. Ancient history, now.

She observes the interactions when she ventures from the safety of the castle walls with him the first time. It was strange, being in Hanamura without Genji by her side.

Nobody seems to recognize her, which is fine and just how she prefers it, but she knows it's because they expect to see Genji at her side and without him she is nothing. When they see her a half-step behind Hyouga, they assume she is a stranger. A pretty stranger, but a stranger none the less. She has few of the identifying features people associate with the Shimada clan at large, since those most well advertised had been that of the main family. She looks  _ very little _ like Genji or his brother. Too distant.

Sometimes Genji introduced her as his girlfriend...

At Hyouga's side, she is just a pretty human, or they don't notice her at all. In that respect, nothing has changed. But  _ Hyouga... _

Hanamura's people alternate between ignoring him outright or casting him distrustful scorn. Hyouga is unfailingly polite when addressed by the latter, and ignores, with grace, the former. Few give him the time of day, and most of them are older people, too old to care anymore the waves of society and what does or does not cause strife; Hyouga is polite when he greets them, and they are polite back. She suspects Rin would have liked him, if perhaps not approved of him. Haruko has no way of knowing; the old ghost has been gone for years, and no one can ask the dead questions.

An old woman worked a flower cart on one of the corners and Hyouga greeted her, calling her grandmother with all due affection and honor. The greeting she calls back is friendly; she knows him by name, he's a good lad and he really should come by more often.

(It almost makes up for what happens next.)

\--

Yuuma himself came to find her.

Haruko did not know why she was surprised by it; the lightning that had been born in her veins the night before had not yet abated, and she had paced incessantly since the dawn. Hyouga had been folded up quiet and thrumming with worry, not sure what had had her wired, but she had been glad for his company. 

She had been glad for his company when during the noon hour, Yuuma had knocked on the door of her quarters, face blank of emotion that might give her information she desperately wanted.

“Lord Shimada summons you.”

Hyouga stirred. In the years he had been here, no one had seen Lord Shimada. She knew he was curious, the same as anyone else. The elders had always said their instruction came from Lord Shimada himself, though Haruko had never let him live under that delusion. Lord Shimada did not  _ rule _ from a mountain retreat, no matter what the whispers were.

Yuuma did not protest when Hyouga unfolded and fell into place behind her, though he linger on him, as if judging who he was supposed to be in relation. She wondered what he thought of an omnic flanking her.

It didn’t matter what he thought.

She did motion for him to remain at the edges when Yuuma led her into the family shrine where Lord Shimada had settled, kneeling before the family tapestry, stained with old blood. A heavy yumi bow sat next to him, the quiver of arrows empty save one on his back. Fresh damage to woodwork and lit paper lanterns was strewn throughout the room. She swept her gaze over it quickly, detecting them alone, trying to decide how the battle had gone.

The dragons had known in the night that something had changed. They had sang to her, crooning to the sky that her master had returned. She had not seen him, but the dragons had recognized their brother, their master, and they, at least, could not be wrong.

She wondered if that was how Yuuma knew his own had returned.

Perhaps.

Haruko knelt, though she did now bow her head in supplication. He may have been the Shimada lord, but he was not  _ her _ lord. He had  _ killed _ her lord.

Her lord’s dragon still flew. Haruko’s spirit was in turmoil. She wanted, desperately, to chase him, but she could not leave Hyouga behind, and she did not know if she would have been chasing a person or trying to catch the fringes of a roving dragon. In the end, she had stayed.

Yuuma did not bow either; he just stepped to Lord Shimada’s side, as if he had never left it.

“You are my brother’s guardian,” Hanzo noted. “You were there the night he died.”

Haruko said nothing, waiting; it wasn’t a question. Genji had died years ago; last night was the anniversary. Hyouga had stayed with her, as he always did, and she had grieved, as she always did. She had not left the castle to seek more comfort; leaving would have felt wrong.

Now she was glad she hadn’t. If she had, she may have never felt the brush of him again.

“I want you to tell me what happened that night.”

(Genji died. Genji died because she had permitted herself to be banished from the room; she had permitted Genji to send her away, instead of forcing him to let her remain at his side.

Genji died because she had failed him.)

“You know what happened better than I, Lord Shimada.”

“Humor me.”

“You killed him.” She owes Hanzo nothing, and she does not belong to him. She squares her jaw when she says the words, daring him to refute them. She doesn’t soften the blow here, though he simply rolls with it. Haruko hates the way he is turned away from her, so all she can see is his back. She hates the way that he is unashamed.

“You took his body. Tell me what happened.”

Her breath catches in her throat and she cannot breathe.

_ Overwatch. _

Overwatch  _ lied. _

\--

The knowledge cut through her like swallowing glass, stirring a rage from ten years in the grave. The dragons stir beneath her skin while she tries not to vomit in the family shrine, struggling to keep her voice level as she tells Lord Shimada what he wants to hear. She is aware of the way Yuuma's eyes linger on her, sharp and telling; aware of the way his fingers stray near blades, prepared to put her down if scales should begin to take shape in the air.

With his master present, Haruko has no doubt he would succeed in that. But now her own master is  _ alive,  _ and she will not fail him by dying before she can return to his side. So she tamps down her feelings for the time being. The anger is unmoored, now, struck loose by the news. No longer is Lord Shimada responsible for Genji's death, though she thinks she could feel that way again, with time. Now it is against Overwatch-- for all the good that does her. Overwatch, too, is dead.

_ Genji is alive. _ It's a frail thing. Fragile, like glass. Strong, like dragon-scale.

(She is strong when Lord Shimada dismisses her. Strong enough to stand on her own two feet. Strong enough to escort herself out of the temple. Strong enough to find Genji.)

(When she passes outside the temple walls, she stumbles, almost collapses, overwhelm with grief and hope, shock. Hyouga catches her, but there's no way to do that that does not leave bruises over her flesh.

The bruises narrow her world and bring her back to the present, but there is nothing she can say to Hyouga to explain. She has no words to speak.)

\--

It doesn't end cleanly; no fire, no water. No stone for the blade. The first death after Genji's that Haruko lets come to pass is a bother at best, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Just two of a neighboring family picking the wrong fight with the wrong dragon.

Haruko's young, but she's no fledgling, and neither are they. She feels no guilt about putting them out of her misery, ensuring they'll trouble not a single soul come dawn.

But she doesn't come away unscathed, either, and the scratch-- for it is just a scratch-- it prickles and festers beneath her skin, sending her staggering, weak-kneed, stumbling, mostly-hidden behind rubbish bins.

Poisoned. Cowards. The idea of death looming after her is welcome and fitting. (Genji is dead.)

It never comes to her, though.

The terribly-accented Nihongo that wafts to her is wretched but a lifesaver, the man civilian and foreign, and this, of all things, makes him the safest person for her to have ever been found by. He nurses her back to health and like Hyouga, she decides, this one is hers.

(To this day, it's Stan she goes to when she runs across things she cannot handle, cannot process. It's Stan's apartment that Hyouga helps her to, still bent and ill over the news.

_ Genji is alive.) _

_ \-- _

Stan’s apartment is tiny, neat and tidy, like most apartments in Japan. Only a single room is filled fit to burst, as per his American habits, but the apartment is only on the third floor of a small apartment building inside Shimada territory, inside  _ Haruko's _ territory.

Even being dizzy and ill with the (welcome) revelation does not stop her from making that climb, with Hyouga's gentle prompting urging her up the wall and inside Stan's window. The omnic climbs in after her, slides the glass closed behind them, turns.

Haruko collapses on Stan's couch without pretending to have dignity. That much, at least, is easy now, after several years of watching Stan himself do it. She leans forward, pillows her head in her arms. The organs sheltered by her ribs ache, and in the secluded safety of Stan's home, her eyes sting, prickle, wet.

Hyouga doesn't comment, but he doesn't sit, either. She listens to him move through the living room, heavy-footed, deliberately making noise. He leaves the room into the kitchen, giving her space.

Stan doesn't emerge from his room. Haruko guesses he's either asleep or not home, breathes out, careful, and loathes the way it shudders.

The Shimada clan doesn't care about the civilians they interact with, her and Hyouga. Her especially. She knows the elders have looked into Stan, with his mouse-brown hair and computer savvy skills, the American who moved to Japan for work, who moved to Hanamura, who surrounds himself with omnics more than people. She knows they have looked at him and thought,  _ if it keeps her distracted. _

A wolf in a cage, made tame with time.

Haruko can feel the edges coming back to her, the bristling, the rage: dragons teeth. She let Hyouga and Stan distract her from her loss, but now the only loss she has is time.

_ Genji is alive. _

(She does not cry. She  _ does not cry. _ She is a Shimada dragon.

She just... She just...)

Haruko  _ breaks _ .

\--

She wakes to the scent of hot chocolate nearby. Beneath her nose, the smell of warm metal and solder, dragons-blood and electricity, the scent of ozone, hazelnuts and persimmons, buried so deeply into cloth nothing yet had managed to get it out.

The sense of smell is the first thing to come to a dragon. Haruko heard rumors that they are born blind and deaf, dragon-kits, dragon-pups. The ones who are born from dragons, at least. Haruko has no idea if there’s any truth to it, but it’s the first thing that comes to her. Sound comes second, while her eyes are still adjusting to the light.

“--then Ami decided that I just wasn’t going to  _ stay home _ anymore, and she agreed. So they made me go.”

“Clearly their attempts were unsuccessful.” 

_ Stan, _ Haruko noted,  _ and Hyouga. _

“Yeah.” A heartbeat. Haruko attempted to blink back the darkness. “When you two… said I could tell people, they were angry I didn’t tell them sooner, and then upset because I wouldn’t let them meet you. They’re still a little sore about that.”

“...you can tell them,” Haruko murmured from her blanket. Someone must have gotten it off the bed. It was the pinwheel one that Stan kept there all year round, insistent that it was important but not capable of explaining  _ why. _ The two men went quiet at the sound of her voice, which told her they’d been waiting for her to wake up. Hyouga probably had known it the moment that her heartbeat changed, but unless he had motioned it to Stan, he hadn’t.

She took that as a cue to get up.

“...you sure?”

Haruko pulled the blanket tighter around her as she sat upright, soaking in the comfort that it provided. Stan and Hyouga sat together on the opposite sofa, knees touching. Hyouga cradled a mug of a steaming something in his hands. Hot water, probably, enjoying the warmth and converting it into energy. Two other mugs sat on the coffee table, one before Stan and one before her.

They smelled like chocolate.

(With Genji, she had had chocolate. Genji had given it to her a few times, laughing about how his pretty doll should be given sweet things. Haruko doesn’t want to think about that just yet.)

She reaches out and takes the mug into gloved hands, bringing it up to relish the thick scent. “...no. It may no longer be safe.”

“It wasn’t safe before,” Stan pointed out, gently. She could feel his bright gaze on her, but she couldn’t look up to meet his eyes. “Naomi and Ami don’t need to know until we’re all comfortable with them knowing.” He waited until after she’d taken her first sip and swallowed down the heat-- there was a taste of something else, and she wondered if he had spiked it with alcohol. It was another thing he insisted  _ just was. _ “Hyouga told me Master Shimada came home?”

_ Hanzo. _

Haruko’s lip twisted, bitter. At least the chocolate tasted the same despite her mood. “I do not know what he will do. The family will follow him.” What was left of it, anyway. “However, he may decide to return the family to how it was before. I would not ask you to follow me into that.”

Stan made an aborted motion, like he wanted to reach out and comfort her. She was glad he didn’t. Thought, maybe, that Hyouga had nudged him. “You don’t have to ask us that. You know we’ll follow you anywhere.”

_ That’s what I’m afraid of, _ she thought, forcing herself to look up at them. They deserved the weight of this.

“Even if he did, I would not be able to stay.”

_ That _ had their attention. Stan’s jaw slackened, and Hyouga  _ sharpened. _ For several moments, they did not speak. Then, they both spoke at once.

“Not stay-- you’re leaving?” Stan demanded, voice pitched high with worry, fright.

“Shimada-dono would not force you out.” Hyouga’s voice was  _ less _ worried in tone, but there was something tremulous to it, like he wasn’t quite sure how sure he was on the matter.

She wished she could reassure them both that she would  _ stay. _ But she couldn’t. Instead, she told them what had happened last night, ten years ago.

(When she’s done, they all sit quietly for several minutes. Haruko nurses her hot chocolate in the meantime, and she will never own up to being startled when Stan slams his fist into his open palm in a gesture so  _ American _ she cannot parse it.

“Alright. Let’s go.”

“Indeed.”

Haruko blinks at them, confused and absolutely  _ lost. _ “Go where?”

“To get Master Genji,” Hyouga tells her, and Stan nods vigorously.)

(Haruko realises all at once that she loves them. They will not ask her to choose. They will not make her break the three of them in one swift blow, because they  _ understand. _ )

(She does not know what she will do if Genji makes her choose, but in her heart she thinks she knows, and she fears that more than anything.)

\--

Of course, it was hardly that simple.

Haruko knew where Genji had been, and there was a potential that he was still in the country. But she did not know where _. _ Yet. It would take a few days and the use of skills that Haruko had never had true need to use, neither with Genji nor after his passing. Perhaps there was a little dust on her claws, but they were still sharp.

Let the clan try to stop her.

Stan insisted he could use the time to get his affairs in order, take leave from his job. Haruko considered, very briefly, going  _ with him _ and enforcing that the leave of absence be granted with no complaints, but Stan had reached out and grasped her hands in his, rubbing the knot-work of hidden scales in reassurance. "It's okay, Haruko. It's going to be  _ okay." _

Damn her heart, but she believed him.

She still thought it would be easier if his boss knew he was lover of a Shimada dragon.

Hyouga was likewise intent to use the days to the best advantage. An employee, not a member of the family, he was bound to a network of rules and regulations that had never held Haruko. From the day Genji had been born, an entirely different structure had been laid before her, and the net the family wove for others had never held her. She did not know what Hyouga intended, but, she was forced to grudgingly admit, she trusted him.

She had taught him. He would be fine, even against Yuuma and his master.

(The urge to shove him into the ritual room for several days reared it's head again, insistent, biting. Haurko wrangled it down with the ease of long practice. Now was not the time for this. She would have to make sure it was not in use first.)

"Do you two want to stay here tonight?" Stan asked, after a second mug of chocolate and a huge dinner. Haruko nuzzled back into the couch, feeling the weight of both men against her sides.

(Usually she and Hyouga sandwiched him, because Stan was a fragile and tiny mouse who needed protection in the world, untrained and unparanoid as he was. It was strange but weirdly reassuring to be the one in the middle for once. She snuggled further into the embrace,  _ welcome  _ and  _ comfort  _ suffusing into her bones.)

It was a delicate sort of question. Stan didn't really  _ understand _ the gravity of Shimada-dono returning, though he seemed to understand that it bothered Haruko. Hyouga understood a little bit better what was coming-- a complete upheaval of his life-- but Stan had arrived in Hanamura after he had left and had never known a time when the family was not ruled by a governing body of slowly dying old people. More over, he was only peripherally associated with the family, both protected and endangered by his contact with her, but protected further because he made his home in Hanamura, inside the territory of a clan of  _ dragons. _

But Stan realized enough to understand that he  _ didn't _ understand, and much as he might have wanted them to stay, he knew it might not be up to him, or to either of them.

"I am not getting off the couch," Haruko decided, then and there and under no disbelief her absence would not be noticed, this time.

That was fine. Lord Shimada had already spoken with her and was likely doing other things at the castle. Much as she did need to know that information, as it could be pertinent to finding Genji, she didn't  _ care. _ She didn't want to be in the castle with him right now. Not while her head was this screwed up, her emotions in a Gordian's knot.

"I will stay as well," Hyouga weighed in, though she suspected her choice had influenced his own. It was touching in it's own way, that Hyouga was concerned about her and might stay for her peace of mind. The family could not touch her-- or they  _ could,  _ but not the same way they could touch Hyouga.

Still. The Family understood that Hyouga was Haruko's.

She dared them to try taking another of what belonged to her.

Stan stirred, moving to push himself off the couch. "Alright. I should get the dishes washed and put away then. You want to watch a movie or something..?"

Haruko reached out, part conscious choice, part instinct. Curled her arms around him and drug him back down. The shift of balance planted him in her lap, but that was okay. He ended up half sprawled over Hyouga, too, which was also fine. She didn't hear any complaints.

"Or... I could do them tomorrow," Stan decided. He shifted a bit, adjusting to the new position and finding a comfortable spot that didn't dig any bones or armor plates into uncomfortable places.

"That would be fine," Hyouga agreed. He stretched out a bit, laying one arm on the back of the couch and providing Haruko the option to wedge herself closer to him.

( _ I love you, _ Haruko didn't say _.  _ She didn't say anything.)

\--

Haruko was thirty-three before dating was a concept that she thought she could perhaps apply to herself, and when she did, she realized that the weekly outings she and Hyouga took together constituted _dates_. As were the monthly gatherings at Stan's house, holed up in his apartment and doing virtually nothing. By then Genji had been dead for five years, she had been dating Stan for a year and Hyouga for two.

It felt like a betrayal somehow, going on a date of her own when she should have been escorting Genji, the way she always had. There were times when she felt Genji's loss keener than others, and that was one of those moments.

But as much as it  _ hurt, _ to attend a date without Genji, it was a routine that Haruko did not shake. The walks with Hyouga let her see how the people were doing, those beneath the dragon's care. They let her patrol the boarders of the city, catch interlopers in her territory. The visits with Stan were uncomplicated, serving a dual purpose of being meditative and likewise permitting her a greater awareness of the population, though this time from a member of the population instead of one of it's wardens.

She waited a few months to compare what they were doing to what Genji had done, on the off chance that she had misread the situation. Then she introduced Hyouga to Stan.

(Turns out they had already known one another.)

\--

The dragons twist and slide beneath her skin while she rests, waiting and anticipatory, prepared to strike when prey walks near, prepared to hunt it down when they had found and staked out hunting grounds. It would have to wait until they had more information, but they were ready and waiting for it, and not about to let the subject drop until it was done.

(The dragons understood, perhaps better than Haruko, the urge she had to track Genji down, the desire to make amends and return to what they had once had. Dragons were creatures of unity and family and Genji had been alone, _Haruko_ had been alone, much too long. She wanted him _back,_ _they_ wanted him _back._ And they would have him back, if it was the _last thing_ she ever did.

But they were also  _ greedy, _ as any dragons of myth near or far. Neither they nor she wanted to lose what they had. But that was a matter for later. For now, she had her Hyouga and Stan, and very soon she would have Genji returned to her. She would return her teeth and claws to their original purpose.)

(And then they would deal with  _ Overwatch.) _


End file.
